In Your Neighborhood, Jan. 27

North Clark County and Woodland

La Center: Kaylee Hammack, 15, was recently crowned 2010 Western Washington Pinto Princess. Kaylee and her 9-year-old brown-and-white pinto, Buster Welsh, have competed in horse shows in Oregon and Washington since 2007. She will compete at the World Pinto Show later this year and hopes to compete for Miss Pinto of America when she is 17. Kaylee is a sophomore at La Center High School and plays for the girls basketball team.

Ridgefield and Fairgrounds

Ridgefield: Lindsey Allais of Ridgefield is co-vice president of community service as well as a senior at LaSalle Catholic College Preparatory School in Milwaukie, Ore. When the Haiti earthquake hit, she and her fellow vice president proposed a one-day school-wide competition to raise funds for Mercy Corps’ emergency relief effort. They created signs, posted announcements, spread the word on the Internet and set up a donation table at the entrance to school. By the end of the day they’d raised $6,065.

Battle Ground, Meadow Glade and Hockinson

Hockinson: Russ Ford, art teacher at Hockinson High School, put a twist in an art project for his students recently. Students began their “Art in the Abstract” project by creating four different designs, with specific black and white or color requirements. Then Ford asked them to deconstruct the works by cutting them into shapes of their choosing and reconstruct them on larger boards to create new artwork. More than 10 of the paintings hang on the walls at Vancouver Pizza.

Hazel Dell, Felida and Salmon Creek

North Salmon Creek: Skyview High School hosted a varsity Knowledge Bowl competition on Jan. 13. Twelve teams from local high schools competed in the interdisciplinary academic competition, which involves teams of four students trying to answer questions in a written round and several oral rounds. Skyview’s A team won the competition with 111 points, the Battle Ground team came in second and Skyview’s B team took third place. Skyview’s A team is undefeated in league competition, coach Bob Brands wrote in an e-mail. Members of the winning team from Skyview are Zach Byrd, Nathan Evans, Charles Fleck, Matt Heid and Fred Lu.

North Salmon Creek: Kristina Hittner and Erin Visak put their day off school in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. to good use. The girls, both fourth-graders at Chinook Elementary School, spent the day raising money for victims of the earthquake in Haiti. Kristina’s teacher, Monica Jochim, talked to her class about different ways to raise money, which gave Kristina the idea to make a sign with Erin. The girls spent MLK Jr. Day collecting donations and “were very surprised to find so many people from the area stopping to give them money,” said Kristina’s mom, Eleanore Hittner, in an e-mail. The pair raised $42.75 and have vowed to go out again to raise more.

Orchards, Sifton and Brush Prairie

Orchards: Evergreen Habitat for Humanity has been awarded $85,677 to build one home in 2010 through a partnership with Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. The national partnership has built 2,000 homes nationwide in the last four years, and Thrivent announced Dec. 4 that it would provide $15 million to continue its support of Habitat for Humanity for a fifth year. Evergreen Habitat for Humanity has already completed one home through the Thrivent Builds program and has built 19 homes in Clark County.

West Vancouver and Downtown

Shumway: Participants in the Leadership Clark County class enjoyed a friendly competition to see who could donate the most toilet paper to the YWCA for families in need during its annual “Social Services” session. Local food pantries and food banks usually see an influx of donations around the winter holidays, but such basic household needs as toilet paper are often forgotten. LCC members made personal donations and also reached out for donations from community businesses, including Georgia-Pacific paper. LCC held its “Social Services” session at the YWCA’s office on Jan. 8 where the students donated six large stacks of tissue, totaling hundreds of rolls.

Central Vancouver, Minnehaha and The Heights

Hudson’s Bay: Blue Bird Transfer Inc. will help the Girl Scouts store and distribute more than 100,000 cases of cookies during the scouts’ annual sales drive in February. For several years, the Vancouver company has provided warehouse space for cookies distributed throughout Southwest Washington and the entire state of Oregon. The company will handle 25 to 30 trailers of Thin Mints, Tagalongs, Samoas and other favorites.

Vancouver Heights: At its November 2009 meeting, the Vancouver Heights Neighborhood Association unanimously voted the following into office: Jennifer Reed, chairwoman; Jan Kent, treasurer; and Josephine Banks, secretary.

East Vancouver, Cascade Park, Fisher’s Landing and Evergreen

Landover-Sharmel: It’s zero hour for the neighborhood association. According to the January newsletter, low attendance at the most recent Landover-Sharmel Neighborhood Association meeting could mean the end of the group. “(O)ur neighborhood was unable to review and vote on our neighborhood’s by-laws (or) elect members to represent all of us on the neighborhood’s executive board,” the newsletter says. And without taking those votes, the neighborhood association itself could fall apart and lose city recognition. At least 15 people need to show up for the meeting to vote on anything. The next meeting of the Landover-Sharmel Neighborhood Association is set for 7 p.m., Monday, Feb. 1 at the Evergreen school district administrative offices, 13501 N.E. 28th Street.

Mountain View: Highly acclaimed band conductor, speaker and clinician Peter Boonshaft visited the Mountain View High School Wind Ensamble on Jan. 11-12. Boonshaft came to help the wind ensemble prepare to perform a feature at the keynote lecture of the 2010 Washington Music Educators State Conference in Yakima on Feb. 12. Boonshaft is a frequent guest speaker at nationally recognized music events such as the Midwest Band and Orchestra Convention and has written several music education books. He is now Conductor of Bands and professor of music education at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.

East Clark County: Camas and Washougal

Prune Hill: Prune Hill Elementary School collected $582 worth of Box Tops, 9,550 Campbell’s labels and three large boxes of cell phones and ink cartridges in its fall fundraising contest. Box Tops for Education ranks the school 19 out of more than 600 schools within a 25-mile radius for its fundraising prowess. Patti Lander’s first-grade class won the first place trophy for collecting the most box tops and soup labels in the school. Sherry Loniewski’s second-grade class came in second and Susie Hassel’s third-grade class secured third place.

Camas: Journalism is a new hobby for students in Patty Holt’s fifth-grade class at Hellen Baller Elementary. The class started its own publication, “Room 205 News.” Nick Singer, Nick Carter, Rani Floyd, Maya Hazen, Eva Litvinov and Luke Pippin are the editors for the newsmagazine. Students submit stories and ideas and meet in the library to discuss which will make it into the paper.